My biggest problem is, and I’m sure Shiela can relate, is that I take home strays. I’ll find somebody in trouble, and I want to help them. And I think they’ll be grateful. But in the end, it turns out they were a stray for a reason. And nothing you can do will ever change that.
The other thing is, I keep getting involved with people who have chemical dependency issues. I think it’s because I’ve been a high functioning alcoholic most of my life. And of course, people who drink like other people who drink. But ultimately, you have to know where to draw the line. And just laying around the house all fucking day, fat drunk and stupid, stoned out of your gourd, is no way to live life.
I didn’t take in strays, not quite anyway. I was certainly inclined to do exactly that, just that circumstances never actually led me to that, not really (temporarily supporting strippers doesn’t count). My first wife was a workaholic and alcoholic, eventually the later overtook the former, and she lost the only two jobs she had in the U.S., one after the other not many years apart as a direct result of her alcoholism. She made good money, more than me most of the time (she was older). It was almost lucky she had issues leading to multiple back surgeries and eventual SS disability to somewhat offset income loss from getting her ass fired.
I was an enabler. I wanted to drink. I didn’t want her to drink too, because she wasn’t ‘high functioning’ like myself. But how do you go out and enjoy yourself (by drinking) and tell her no. I tried going out alone, just got me constantly accused of cheating. I never cheated, not once. If she joined me, she drank twice as fast as I did at half my weight. So, I’d end up dragging her crying out of wherever we were. The crying was what happened when she drank. It would just happen. Of course I would then get dirty looks by all wondering what I did. Well, I didn’t stop her from drinking is what I did. And she got mean when she drank, saying ridiculous nasty things. And she would get stubborn and irrational.
Once very early in the relationship she asked me to help her stop drinking. I didn’t help her. It hadn’t gotten bad yet, and I selfishly didn’t want to stop being an enabler. I just didn’t think it was that bad back then. Years after she reminded me of her request. She never forgot she asked me to help her stop drinking those many years ago. By the time I was on board, she wasn’t. I’d find a pile of empties in a closet. That was when she began sleeping on the couch, to drink after I went to bed. I just gave up and began buying it for her again to avoid a cab being called while I was at work. I had stopped letting her drive after the 3rd DWI and so very much property damage.
The last time I got into any real trouble due to my drinking was in 1990. I’m careful, and about the worst I’ve been in years was a month or so ago when I sat up and fell into the TV stand at 6AM when I was supposed to be working from home by 9AM. I emailed in sick that morning. Doing that once in 17 months of pandemic boredom isn’t that bad I tell myself.
My Peruvian is different. She rarely drinks too much. If she does, she gets amorous, but frequently begins throwing up well before I can take advantage. We have a ritual now where I make her a daily blueberry mojito, not too strong. She has the one, extremely rarely, a second. When we go out, both of us stay sensible (except for some reason when I take her to Baltimore. . . LOL). Or, we hang out at her sister’s, and I drink with the brother-in-law and toss the keys to my Peruvian.